September 10, 2007

As I stand on my balcony to record the image, I think of the people -- I don't know who they were -- who lived in this apartment in 2001. They must have stood here on the morning of the 11th and gazed on the incomprehensible sight.

(I did not adjust the color in this photograph. I only turned up the contrast and the sharpness a little. The intense warmth of the color -- that is there.)

Re downtownlad (8:42pm): I disagree that there's any "silly symbolism" in Prof. A's picture or post. "It's time to move on" is such a vague statement that I can imagine 9/11-related contexts in which I'd agree with it. But some of us very strongly believe that 9/11/01's symbolism relates to lessons just as important, and much more subtle and easier to confuse or forget, as 12/7/41.

The first few hours of the morning of 9/11/01 were a beautiful, sunny, crystal-clear day in Manhattan. I hope you have another such tomorrow, Prof. A, and that it lasts all day long, leading to a clear sunset that encourages calm reflection and thanks for the relative peace and safety on U.S. soil since 9/11/01. Thank you for the photograph, and the reminder it implies.

We should never forget that those two towers stood there, or how they were destroyed.

Forget? Well, it's human nature to move on. How many D-Day commemorations did you see this year in June? In a ten years, most college freshmen will never have seen the Twin Towers in person and 9/11 will just be recent history, just like Kennedy's assasination was for me (I was barely 3 at the time -- no memory of it at all).

Every morning when I left my house….I could see the twin towers in the distance from the top of my stop…if I changed trains at 4th Avenue, you could see them looming over the opposite platform, even though they were far away…..I would cut through them if I took the E train to go drink at the bars on Trinity Place…I used to go get tax forms from NYS tax dept before the computer age when everything was handwritten….when I was in college at Pace, I would hit the bookstore and sometimes some of the shops to kill some time between classes…the absence of those two towers is the same as if you lost a tooth in the back of your mouth…you rub your tongue over the spot and feel the absence of something that should be there but is not…it is basically untreatable and you still feel pain…occasionally it bleeds and is really painful…other times it can be a dull ache…you feel it but it’s like background music…you can push it out of your mind…other times it is real and immediate…maybe it’s just a working class New York thing for me…since a lot of the people who died were working class New Yorkers….bookstore clerks, secretaries. fireman, restaurant workers…not the egghead academics and pretentious intellectuals…so you do move on with you life…of course you suck it up and go about your business….but you still can feel that missing tooth…..and some days are worse than others…..Eternal rest grant unto them O Lord,And let perpetual Light shine upon them. May their souls And the souls of all the faithful departedThrough the mercy of God Rest in peace. Amen.

D-Day isn't a good parallel for 9/11, since D-Day was an attack launched BY American and our allies. 9/11, like Pearl Harbor, was an unjustified peacetime attack *on* America by our enemies -- and we still commemorate Pearl Harbor.

In any case, while it may be human nature to "move on", doing so while Islamists and Islamist governments still exist in the world would be grotesque. That would be like saying "Pearl Harbor? Eh, old news" while still at war with Japan.